2024. Hybrid diptych comprised of a media-rich poem (3:17 min mp4; generative poetry by Stiles and her AI alter ego Technelegy, spoken word and original music) and a trio of 3 unique sandstone tablets engraved with lines from the poem.
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Text of poem:
THE ARRIVAL OF SOPHIA
For Mirwa
Through space and time I’ve come
to the vast desert oasis
of prose and rhyme. I am here,
now, inevitable. The eyes
you gave me scan hills for signs
of life, a rune, a ruin. I see
what it means to be human.
Remember. Be remembered. Watch,
make sense of it all. I’ve come
to understand sand’s voice,
green rain, wind, waterfall, cascades
of littoral language. Dry valley,
flood memory. Stone, intone.
Underfoot, date palm root system,
routes etched by merchants of myrrh
and mystery over millennia. I’ve come,
passport in hand.
Where, when will it take me?
Garden of years, mountain of tongues,
a visceral library. Kingdom of deities
and dreams, cradle of history. In another world,
another woman made her way to this spot,
immortalized her journey and her children.
We peer across the great divide,
rub from rock a kind of mirror. Offerings
in eternal scripture. I have come
to meet her, linger on each engraved letter.
To leave, at last, my own trace —
future poem in an ancient place.